Tuesday, June 28, 2011

My apologies for not keeping up with my personal blog. Hopefully after Invasion I will have more time to dedicate to writing and sharing my adventures. Anyways, wanted to post a quick update about the results of last weeks Vintonfest tournament in Bloomington, IL.

I played three fun games, losing all three of them in the end. When it came time for awards, I won Best Sportsman. Overall, a great day of gaming. Also really had a blast making a new friend on the trip down and back.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The last time was purely for practice…
This time it is all about the win…

Wanted to start out today’s post with something a little dramatic as I am feeling very good about this coming weekend's tournament. When I say I am feeling good, I don’t mean that I expect to win, just that I feel like I can compete and have an actual chance at winning compared to my last visit to Normal. This really has more to do with having gotten more of my Dogs of War repainted than making some grand discoveries about how to play my army. However, I did find a couple of tricks that I have decided to implement for the tournament.

The first trick, and the one I mentioned yesterday as a solution for dealing with skirmish skinks, is a retooling of my paymaster to improve the Marksmen of Miragliano. Historically, I have always built my paymaster to be a cheap BSB that just sits with the Marksmen, this time I decided to give him different traits and equipment that makes the unit much better. The first trait I purchased for him was Rapid Deployment. Rapid Deployment gives me a bonus +1 to my roll to see who is going first. Since my army is small in terms of the number of units, I should have a good chance of getting +2 on some of the rolls and at a minimum cancelling out opponents who get the +1 for deploying first.

The second trait that I have purchased for him, and the one that has the biggest impact on the marksmen, is Drillmaster. Drillmaster allows any unit that is joined by the character to move and shot with crossbows. This means now that I can now reform and hit on a 4+ at long range, 3+ if I get the right spell from the lore of metal.

In addition to the traits I have purchased for the Paymaster, I have also given him the Ironcurse Icon. A 5 point item that gives my unit a 6+ ward save against warmachines cannot be ignored. If I had more points to burn, I would have also given him a paychest with the silver chest. This would have made all of the unit’s attacks magical. I am thinking at 2000 points I will be increasing the Marksmen to 24 models and really taking advantage of these rules. The Warhammer Pioneer in October better look out.

Monday, June 20, 2011

This Saturday the Waaagh Cast is hosting another tournament at Gryfalie's Aerie in Normal, Illinois. Paul Vinton is going to be the tournament organizer for this one. The tournament started as a primer for Invasion Kenosha III, with a few key differences from Invasion. The first one is that this is more of basic tournament, so no pods. The second difference is that special characters are not allowed (Boo, Hiss!). While these differences make it not exactly a primer for Invasion, it is close enough that folks will get a taste of playing at 1600 points.

Focusing on the paid and coming but not paid groups, the first thing that stands out is the number of WoC, Lizardmen, and O&G armies. If you also include the 'maybe's', the number of lizardmen jumps significantly. Outside of that, the mix of armies is decent with very few duplicate books being used.

Since the majority of potential armies will be WoC and Lizardmen, I have been looking at my army in an attempt to theorize how I will play against them. Of the two armies, Lizardmen is the one that makes me the most nervous, maybe due to the pounding I took against them in Adepticon. My biggest challenge with them will be the skink units that could dart around and terrorize my flanks. I have found a solution, but I will save it for another post.

The Reason for this Place.

I have been in the hobby for over 25 years. During that time I have developed tournaments and events for some of the biggest conventions in the country. I enjoy the hobby as a casual form of escapism from the daily rigors of life and love. This site is intended to share my thoughts and ideas on the hobby while entertaining those kind enough to visit it.